this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
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  • Apple's progress with Siri and artificial intelligence has been slow, and features promised in June remain delayed.
  • At a Siri team meeting, senior director Robby Walker acknowledged the frustration within the team, describing the delays as "ugly."
  • Features like Siri understanding personal context and taking action based on a user’s screen are still not ready and may not make it into iOS 19.
  • Challenges include quality issues that caused these features to malfunction up to a third of the time and conflicts with Apple's marketing division over showcasing incomplete features.
  • Apple has withdrawn related advertisements and added disclaimers on its website, citing extended development times.
  • Senior executives, including Craig Federighi and John Giannandrea, are reportedly taking personal accountability for the delays.
  • Walker emphasized that the team’s work is impressive and that the delayed features will be released once they meet Apple’s standards.
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[–] ABetterTomorrow@lemm.ee 20 points 1 day ago (4 children)

AI isn’t the answer. Plain and simple.

[–] turnip@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago

AI can make me a video of the brave little toaster suplexing Putin, to sit on that kind of power is silly.

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[–] Oisteink@feddit.nl 47 points 2 days ago (2 children)

How is this bad news? Dire situation?? They are not where they want to be with this “feature” so they delay it. Sounds like a smart move. Probably second best option to just dropping it

[–] Xatolos@reddthat.com 38 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Biggest issue is they had a huge marketing campaign based on all these things Apple Intelligence could do, with dates saying when it will come and that you needed to buy the newest iPhone for them to happen. Those dates have come and gone and still no signs of it. If the next iPhone comes out and they still haven't released it, they risk a huge lawsuit of mis-advertising. It doesn't matter whether users use the feature or not, it was advertised, and very directly.

Normally, Apple is cautious/careful how they phrase things about their devices so they could back away if something doesn't go right or doesn't do what was suggested/implied. But they can't this time.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago

Everyone who cheer-led the AI garbage trucks moved up in the world. Across the board. All over ther world.

Turns out they were very, very wrong and quite stupid.

Now Apple (and everyone else) has to roll all that back and try to save face.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago

Exactly. I thought the article was going to be about how they've been shoe-horning "Apple Intelligence" into recent updates, which everyone turns off immediately. Instead it's:

The company has officially delayed features first promised last June intended to modernize Siri and give Apple a much-needed boost in the AI race.

HA! First of all the "AI race" is an ass-grabbing competition between insane corporate overlords who can't wait to burn another hundred billion on something that doesnt' work.

Secondly, last June was still in the bubble of AI hype when everyone and their dog was forced to comment on it ortherwise the idiot herds would affect stock price.

Thirdly, this isn't about Apple not getting something to work, this is about Apple understanding what an abysmal shitshow the generative AI functionality is, and trying to land the plane before anything else catches fire.

Ridiculous.

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 34 points 2 days ago (1 children)

these features to malfunction up to a third of the time

That's "ai" for you lol

[–] auraithx@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 days ago

Dropping rapidly, and using reasoning models can solve most of it today.

https://github.com/lechmazur/confabulations/

[–] scarabic@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

A while ago I set up a Siri shortcut that opens ChatGPT in voice mode. Now I can just say “hey siri, ask the demon” and in a moment start talking to ChatGPT with no further commands and zero buttons pressed throughout. It answers in voice mode.

This is pretty useful for things like doing units conversions while my hands are sticky during cooking, or just doing simple information lookups while my hands are busy. I use ChatGPT responsibly, never trusting it for things that aren’t one-dimensional information retrievals and summarization. It works great for me for like 50-60% of the things I used to Google. Internet search is, once again, just for finding websites, like it should be.

What’s my point? We don’t need Siri Apple Intelligence to ship. There’s already something better. And it runs on my iPhone 14, which isn’t even compatible with Apple Flatulence.

[–] invertedspear@lemm.ee 17 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I’ve never used Apple intelligence and Siri alone has done a fine job for unit conversions, info lookups, and most any other things. No need to fire up chat GPT for those basic uses

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[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 24 points 2 days ago

Anyone who isn't completely high from huffing AI brainfarts saw this coming.

[–] Kyle_The_G@lemmy.world 26 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I don't want that on my phone. I just want a dumb program that sets alerts and schedules, I don't want it interpreting information and I doubt most people really need that function on a phone.

[–] tauren@lemm.ee 14 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, but smartphones have stopped offering anything new. I recently upgraded my 8-year-old device, and I hardly notice any difference. I bet other customers see that too. They are desperately trying to find the next big thing. It's astonishing, however, that all these companies completely ignore the fact that their customers don't even want AI features.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

But but but . .. they've spent Hundreds of Billions of Dollars on this!!! You HAVE to buy it!!! Noooooooooo

[–] ToadOfHypnosis@lemm.ee 18 points 2 days ago

AI is overrated in almost every implementation that isn’t scientific research. The buzzword stock hype machine fake growth cycles are going to kill the tech industry.

[–] twinnie@feddit.uk 21 points 2 days ago (2 children)

If they know Siri’s shit then why can’t I have my power button back?

[–] brap@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

Would be nice if any voice assistant actually did what I asked.

[–] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Could you explain? I have never turned Siri on, but my power button works as normal.

[–] JuxtaposedJaguar@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If Siri is enabled, then the default behavior of long-pressing the power button brings up Siri instead of turning off the device. IIRC you can disable that behavior without having to disable Siri, but there's no way to set the "action button" to open Siri; if you want a Siri button, it needs to be the power button.

[–] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago

Thank you! I am not a fan of assistants, so I’ve always kept it off.

[–] Cocopanda@futurology.today 6 points 1 day ago (5 children)

I can careless for Ai Siri. There’s no real need. I barely use Siri anyways.

[–] PeteZa@lemm.ee 3 points 1 day ago

I only use it for voice controls.

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[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago

Features like Siri understanding personal context and taking action based on a user’s screen are still not ready and may not make it into iOS 19.

Tech companies not understanding exponential complexity is one of the funnier things to come out of recent years.

[–] ofcourse@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Apple fucked up no doubt. Given how hard they pushed AI as a key feature of IPhone 16 I wouldn’t be surprised if they get a class action lawsuit for this.

But it’s also interesting to read a few things from the article that makes me hopeful for when Apple finally releases the features:

  1. Let’s be honest, AI by Google, MS is shit right now. They are claiming the same promises which most of the time don’t work, but Apple chose to delay release until they could get better consistency.
  2. The executives are taking personal responsibility? I hope that’s the case and no developers are thrown under the bus for this. I’ve rarely seen an article mention personal executive responsibility from a tech firm for delays and qa issues.
  3. I hope marketing gets reigned in so they won’t push other unready features the next few years.
  4. I hope Apple releases some open source AI tooling to re-gain good will. Would love to see some more competition in the AI space.
[–] JuxtaposedJaguar@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago

I hope Apple releases some open source AI tooling to re-gain good will. Would love to see some more competition in the AI space.

That's literally never going to happen. Closed-source proprietary stuff is their MO.

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